Some people seem slightly alarmed by the rise of automation in marketing.

Is it the first step towards all of us being replaced by robots that will eventually enslave humankind and force us to oil their joints until the end of time?

While that might have been a lame attempt at a joke, it is actually very relevant to the Creative Programmatic event I attended yesterday, which was all about how this largely automated channel needn’t spell the end of human creativity in marketing.

No doubt you’re all aware by now that Google is removing ads from the right-hand side of its search results pages (SERPs).

Ads will now only appear at the top and bottom of SERPs.

To give some context around what this means for search marketers, we asked several experts for their take on why Google made this decision, and also how marketers need to adjust their PPC campaigns as a result.